A Game of Thrones discussion

Anyone else regard it as their favorite book series of all time? This is a book series where I can open up one of the books, at any page, and find the same joy I had when reading it the first time. It is also the most immersive series I’ve ever read. Any others feel this way, particularly placing it over other highly regarded series?

Nope.

No, definitely not. In fact to make it even readable it needs an editor with the standing order to cut about 2 or 3,000 pages out of it to make it even tolerable.

Writers like Martin are heavily derivative and cliche-heavy hacks. He's a great yarn spinner. Had he written the Fire and Ice series as screenplays, they would be brilliant. He basically just borrows from classic fantasy, spins his own tale with it (quite well; as I said he's a great yarn spinner), and just fails epic-style on writing it all down.

He must say a version of "dark as night" at least 100 times in 100 different ways in his books. The lake was black as night. Her hair was dark as night. He pointed with a finger, as dark as night. Etc.

AND...he takes like 5000 years to move the story along, because he's too busy trying so hard to sound fancy about every insignificant detail of every little thing in his story. The princess of rainbows was of the prism tribe, carrier of the amulet of flagstaff, harbinger of the days of demonite, finder of lost imps, rider of the steed of the realm of falamor, traitor of gravetarn, eater of the rocks of forlicus.

It's like, ok dude, there was an epic princess, we get it. Now move on with the yarn. Gah!

Not really - it's good, but I prefer much closer narratives that follow one or two characters. I only really care about 3-4 people in GoT and the rest of it is a drag for me!